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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2016
Names: Brookield was once a cannery town
Continued from Page 1A
Puget Island resident Joe
Budnick, 69, proposed the
new names. He said he lived
in Brookield from his birth in
1946 until a logging company
razed the town in the late 1950s.
He and his siblings are among
the last living former residents.
For most of his time there,
Brookield was a ghost town.
But long ago, it was home to as
many as 500, mostly immigrant
families.
Budnick said he’s recently
heard from numerous people
with ties to the town who are
thrilled to see Brookield getting
some recognition.
“It was quite a history,” Bud-
nick said. “The older people I
talked to said it was the greatest
place on earth. They all still wish
they were back there again.”
No more Jim Crow
A controversy over the three
“Jim Crow” landmarks, which
are on the Columbia River in
western Wahkiakum, arose in
April, after state Sen. Pramila
Jayapal, D-Seattle, proposed an
effort to change Washington’s
racist place names.
The term “Jim Crow” comes
from a racist character that
appeared in minstrel shows,
cartoons, songs and radio plays
between the mid-1800s and
mid-1900s. The name became
a racial slur, and was eventually
used to describe the discrimina-
tory laws that were prevalent in
the South after the Civil War.
Many historians believe
“Jim Crow” places were proba-
bly named for an early black set-
tler named James Saules, who
lived in Paciic and Wahkiakum
counties during the mid-1800s.
However, some locals argue that
the places were actually named
for an Indian chief or a log-
ger named Jim Crow, or for the
birds who perched in a tree on
the point. While some locals felt
strongly that the names should
not be changed, others found
them highly offensive.
Budnick said he got involved
because he felt several media
accounts of the dispute made it
seem like everyone in Wahkia-
kum County was racist.
“That really bothered me,”
Budnick said. He’d grown up
with the names and didn’t think
much of it for a long time. But
after the controversy arose, he
came to believe that it was time
for a change.
Saules — not
‘a stand-up guy’
After researching James
Saules, he wasn’t convinced
the places should be named
after him. As one of a very few
black pioneers, and the proba-
ble impetus for Oregon’s harsh
black exclusion policy, Saules
is undeniably an important his-
torical igure, but, “He wasn’t
a stand-up guy, really,” Bud-
nick said. He was bothered by
accounts that suggest Saules
mistreated Native American
women — in 1846, an Oregon
court charged him with killing
his native wife.
Budnick mined the town’s
rich history in search of some
less controversial alternatives.
“I wanted something that
was a compromise, but without
any disagreement. I wanted a
name that everybody could say,
‘Yeah, that’s logically what it
should be’” Budnick explained.
Company town in the
woods
In “Company Towns of the
Northwest,” author Linda Carl-
son said businessman Joseph
Megler built his salmon can-
nery in 1873, and named the
new community after his wife
Nellie’s home town, Brook-
ield, Massachusetts. A post
ofice, docks, the Fink Bros.
Stave Company, and the beau-
tiful Megler mansion and gar-
dens went in too, but the town
remained isolated.
“Boat travel was vital” to the
town, Carlson wrote, because
“there was no road out until 1951.”
Territorial census records
show that many of the early
cannery workers were Native
American or Chinese. Even-
tually though, Megler, a Civil
War vet who was born in Sax-
ony, Germany, began recruiting
workers from Croatia.
“That’s where he got my
grandfather and my great-grand-
father,” Budnick said. His last
name is an Anglicized version of
the Croatian name “Budinich.”
In exchange for ishing or work-
ing in the cannery, Megler
promised to help the immigrants
become citizens.
“Most of the people that
were in Brookield were kind of
like indentured servants. They
came and worked for him until
Photo courtesy of Joe Budnick
The Megler Cannery occupied a small cove in the lee of
a small headland with the controversial name Jim Crow.
the cannery burned,” in 1931,
Budnick said. His grandfather
told him that despite their sta-
tus, the immigrants were gener-
ally very happy, and “loved the
area.”
From minor leagues to
homesteading
Under Budnick’s pro-
posal, Harlow’s Creek would
be named for John and Mary
Harlow. In an email, the Har-
lows’ granddaughter, California
anthropologist Julia Hammet,
told Budnick that John Conrad
“Con” Harlow’s family came
from Milwaukie. From the late
1800s to the 1910s, Harlow was
a catcher and manager for minor
league baseball teams. He met
his future wife, Mary Theresa
Konz, while she was living in
Kansas. He sent for her, and the
two married in Astoria.
After ending his career as a
baseball player, Harlow worked
as a isherman and as the post-
master of the Brookield Post
Ofice. At irst, the couple
did not build a house on their
creekside property. When Ham-
met’s mother, Constance Har-
low, was born in June 1916, the
Harlows were living in a house-
boat on Jim Crow Creek.
“They later pulled the house-
boat up on land, and dry-docked
it, then built the two-story house
over it,” Hammet wrote. She
believes her mother was the last
person to be born in Brookield.
Serious about mail
In the 1940s, Mary Har-
low became the postmistress —
something that Budnick vividly
remembers.
At the time, the arrival of the
mail boat was an event, because
it also brought food and sup-
plies. On mail days, Con Har-
low would wait for the boat on
the dock, while Mary Harlow
chatted with Budnick’s mother.
Once the mail bag was in her
hands however, Harlow would
suddenly become very serious
about her role as postmistress.
“She’d open the post ofice,
go inside, open up the win-
dow, hand us the mail through
the window, then close it back
down again,” Budnick recalled.
“It was pretty funny because we
were the only ones there. She
didn’t smile, even when she
opened the post ofice.”
The recluse Beares
Georgianna and John Beare,
for whom Beare Hill would be
named, settled in Brookield in
the early 1900s. According to a
May 1979 Wahkiakum County
Eagle article that Budnick pro-
vided, Georgianna came west
from Missouri and John from
Mississippi. Both were mid-
dle-aged by the time of their
1909 wedding in Portland.
John Beare got a job at
Megler’s cannery, and the two
grew hay and berries on their
5-acre plot. The author of the
article, Mildred Jones, said the
two “managed on very little
money,” cutting trees for fuel
and lumber, and preserving
fruits and vegetables from their
large garden.
The Beares were very iso-
lated. To get supplies, John
Beare had to hike 4 miles to
the boat landing, then travel by
river to another town. Accord-
ing to Jones, Georgianna Beare
only left their homestead twice
between 1909 and 1941 —
once for a brief business trip to
Cathlamet, and the second time
when her husband had a stroke
in 1941.
“Each time she left home,
she wore her 1909 wedding suit
and her high old shoes,” Jones
wrote.
When John Beare died at the
end of 1941, Georgianna was
78. Locals decided it was best
to move her into a Cathlamet
nursing and maternity home.
The elderly homesteader report-
edly adapted well to her new
surroundings.
“Here is where Georgi-
anna heard her irst radio, tele-
phone, saw electric lights,
indoor plumbing, enjoyed her
irst automobile ride,” the article
said. She died at the age of 95, in
July 1958.
Living among the ruins
By the 1940s, Brookield had
changed a great deal. Megler
died in 1915. The cannery was
not rebuilt after the July 1931
ire, and the salmon ishery was
not what it had once been. Many
residents moved away.
In 1951, the Crown Zeller-
bach logging company bought
up a big waterfront site, accord-
ing to local historian Irene Mar-
tin. The company built the irst
road to Brookield, and began
using the site as a log-dump, and
logging the surrounding areas.
The post ofice inally closed in
1954.
Budnick remembers the day
a man came to ask his father if
he wanted to buy up the town.
His father tried to scare up
enough money to preserve the
community, but others didn’t
quite believe that the company
would really wipe out the town,
so they decided not to buy. By
that point, everything from the
schoolhouse to the Megler man-
sion had been abandoned, and
the Budnicks were the only ones
living among the ruins.
“We used to play in the
mansion, play in the cannery,
the school house — the books
were all still there, and those
little wooden desks,” Budnick
recalled.
Budnick and his siblings
thought living in a ghost town
was “the greatest thing in the
world.”
“I think about the kids now
that hang around 7-11 learn-
ing how to smoke and cuss and
shoplift — we were in a Disn-
eyland for kids,” Budnick said.
Last days of Brookield
In 1957, the Crown Zeller-
bach bulldozers arrived and
knocked everything down.
Con Harlow had died of
a gunshot wound in 1953, so
Mary Harlow decided to return
to her native Texas. She offered
to let the Budnick family stay in
her house outside of town.
“She knew we were get-
ting kicked out of Brookield,”
Budnick said. “It was such a
shame.” The house had a lush
toilet, but no electricity or other
modern conveniences, and he
still remembers how it made
strange creaking noises at night.
He and his siblings loved stay-
ing there, and so did their friends
and relatives.
“I see people whom I hav-
en’t seen in 40 years, and it’s
the irst thing they ask about,”
Budnick said. “It was a place
where city kids had never been
before. They still have really
great memories of going out in
the middle of nowhere and liv-
ing like we did, with kerosene
lanterns.”
The family held onto the
house, but eventually, it got
tough to keep up the only house
in such a remote area. By about
1984, there were constant
break-ins.
“We kind of gave up on it,”
Budnick said. He bought his
current home on Puget Island
and moved away.
Town that lives on in
memories
Today, the frame of the Har-
low house still stands, but there
are few other signs of the town,
aside from a few rotting pilings
in the river. Budnick says it’s
hard to believe there used to be
a dance hall here. He still goes
to visit the former town and Har-
low house quite often.
In its heyday, there were lots
of fruit trees by a bend in the
creek, and he still feels wistful
for the way they perfumed the
air.
“It hits you. You get that
smell when you irst go there,”
Budnick said. “That’s the way
Brookield was to me — the
smell in the air would change
to this really beautiful smell of
apples and blackberries ...”
Training: It’s about making it as realistic as possible Highway:
‘The
problem
is there is
so little
money’
Continued from Page 1A
The students backstroked
into a daisy chain, locking their
legs and arms together as they
treaded water toward the life
raft, climbing in and then out
before swimming to Job Corps’
pilot boat Iuka. As students
climbed on board, they peeled
their suits off and emptied water
from their boots and hoods.
“It felt good,” said Samuel
Perez, a seamanship student
from Harbor City, California,
who wants to work on tugs at
the Port of Los Angeles. The
suit shoots the occupant up,
he said, and does most of the
work keeping them aloat.
Student Rick Fuller from
Seattle said she was more
afraid of jumping off the Iron-
wood than treading water.
“I’m glad I didn’t have to
do this when the ship was actu-
ally going down,” said Fuller,
who after Job Corps would
like to join the Coast Guard or
work on a tug.
Continued from Page 1A
Make it real
Overlooking the exercise
Wednesday was Capt. Len
Tumbarello, head of the sea-
manship program and a for-
mer commander in the Coast
Guard.
“I remember as a young
cadet … dawning an immer-
sion suit, stepping off into the
wild blue yonder and doing
the very same thing, just get-
ting that feel of, ‘OK; I’m
going from a safe vessel to the
ocean in a suit that’s supposed
to protect me,’” he said. “And
it did, for the short time I was
in there. But I never had to do
it for real. But I felt because of
that experience, I was ready
for a real-life scenario.”
Making it as realistic as
possible is what Tumbarello
said the immersion training is
about, putting students in the
river rather than a swimming
pool.
Photos by Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
ABOVE: Job Corps Seamanship students assist one another getting into an emergency life raft during training
Wednesday. BELOW: Job Corps Seamanship program students participate in an abandon ship training exercise
Wednesday. More photos online at DailyAstorian.com
Standing next to Tum-
barello was Sarah Little, a
crewing administrator with
Crowley Maritime, a marine
transport and logistics com-
pany that reaches out to differ-
ent training programs.
“This kind of training is
pretty much imperative,” she
said. “You can’t very well
get into the maritime industry
without it anymore. The rules
and regulations with the Coast
Guard are such that you can’t
just get on-the-job training.”
“I like the quality of mari-
ner that comes out of this pro-
gram,” she said. “I’ve been
working with them for several
years. It’s well-rounded.”
Johnston said the irst
priority is funded and will
add a “J-turn” lane near
Cullaby Lake. The $6.5
million project is expected
to begin in 2018.
Another priority in the
state’s plan is a major inter-
section improvement for
Glenwood Village. Work
would cost about $7 mil-
lion, and include building
a new bridge on U.S. High-
way 101 just south of the
intersection.
Johnston said the earli-
est money could be avail-
able for the intersection is
in the next funding cycle in
2021.
Long term, other pro-
posed projects include wid-
ening the shoulders for
bicyclists and widening the
whole corridor with some
medians in between lanes.
With any transportation
project, the struggle is ind-
ing the funds.
So little money was
available in the last fund-
ing cycle, Johnston said,
oficials could only focus
on small scale bicycle
and pedestrian improve-
ments when they wanted
to request money for
the Glenwood Village
intersection.
“The problem is there
is so little money,” John-
ston said. “It’s nationwide
problem.”